Chris: I had a friend in fifth grade that I’d just met. I went to his house and he had a guitar there. I started messing around with it and I could never put it down. Every time I was at his house, I was like, “Let’s play your guitar!” He’d say, “Let’s go ride Motorcross” or something. I was annoying him constantly [Laughs]. A friend of his sold me his first guitar, which was like this Sears guitar. It was hilarious. It had 18 frets, and I couldn’t tune it. The first thing I did was paint it red and throw some black duct tape on it like Eddie Van Halen.

ARTISTdirect.com: Did MEGADETH approach “TH1RT3EN” with one cohesive vision?

Chris: I don’t think so. We had talked about what we wanted it to do in terms of live performance. We were thinking ahead about how we want these songs to come across when we play them out. That was really it. Once you sit down and start writing, the songs take their own course. Sometimes, you can’t deny the way a song wants to go and it almost develops itself. Once you’re in the studio, that’s what tends to happen.

ARTISTdirect.com: Did you have the opportunity to try anything new in terms of the guitar?

Chris: I think it was a lot more open in terms of our guitar tones and I was really happy with that. Whereas last time on “Endgame”, everything was unified in terms of tones. Dave [Mustaine] and I used the exact same tones for everything. This time, we set out to diversify a little bit and add more depth in terms of individual tones. I thought that was awesome. It adds another level of interest into the sound.

ARTISTdirect.com: Do you and Dave both bring different elements to the sound like a Ying and Yang effect?

Chris: I like the Ying and the Yang idea. That’s definitely where Dave and I come from. He got his playing from picking up records and CDs and figuring them out anyway he could. My approach was much more schooled. When it comes to our individual solos or main melodies, we get to reflect our individuality at that point. It’s got to be cohesive to an extent, but there’s a lot of that Ying and Yang idea.

ARTISTdirect.com: If you were to compare Th1rt3en to a movie, what would you compare it to?

Chris: I wouldn’t compare it to any single movie. You’ve got a horror classic in “Millenium Of The Blind” and you have some angry documentary about somebody in “Never Dead”. Then you have some action adventure in “Sudden Death”. That’s the thing I like about this CD — it’s very diverse.